Book Bytes are short capsules of recently published books dealing with sports.

The Match: Althea Gibson & Angela Buxton
Bruce Schoenfeld
Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., 2004

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Trained and acclaimed as an award-winning magazine and television journalist, Bruce Schoenfeld accomplishes what other reporter-turned-authors fail to master: penning a compelling chronicle of major 20th sports stars with a skilled and superb literary style. While sports bios of memorable characters and events has blossomed in to a profitable moonlighting venture for modern-day sports writers and broadcasters, few succeed, as Shoenfeld does, in translating journalistic training and a reporter’s news sensibility into great prose.

Subtitled “How Two Outsiders – One Black, the Other Jewish – Forged a Friendship and Made Sports History,” Schoenfeld reveals the unique personalities of 1950’s tennis champions Angela Buxton and Althea Gibson while reminding readers of the pair’s significant contributions to tennis history, individually as well as jointly. Largely absent from modern memory, The Match serves as a fitting tribute to an interesting time in the sport’s history and to two women who provided some of the era’s most remarkable professional and personal accomplishments.

Born in Silver, South Carolina on August 25, 1927, Althea Gibson was raised in New York’s Harlem ghetto from the time she was three years old. Painted as a colorful, tight-knit community, the Harlem of the 1930’s and ‘40’s was indeed a ghetto, but not yet a slum, occupied primarily by African American and minority families, socially and economically depressed, but lacking in the derelict housing and squalor typically associated with the famous urban neighborhood.

Growing up an ardent competitor, Gibson excelled at every athletic endeavor she attempted. A neighborhood icon for her fierce desire to win, the young girl gained local fame for her skill in basketball, bowling, street games and, later, tennis. Demonstrating less interest in education, the gifted Gibson ceased attending school, unmonitored and uninspired by any mentor, choosing to spend days – and nights – competing in schoolyard contests and city-wide tournaments of all variety.

Discovered by Dr. Walter Johnson, a Lynchburg, Virginia physician, who would later launch the career of Arthur Ashe, and befriended and supported by fellow Harlem resident Sugar Ray Robinson, Gibson was re-enrolled in a North Carolina high school to complete her education and receive training from Dr. Hubert Eaton. Attending and graduating from Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Gibson actively participated in ATA competitions throughout her school years, winning ten championships.

An ocean away, Angela Buxton, daughter of a well-off if not legitimately wealthy British family, took up tennis during the family’s self-imposed World War II exile to South Africa. Seeking safety as Jews threatened by war-torn Europe, the family lived in relative peace, enjoying civilized colonial life in temperate South Africa, including tennis instruction for young Buxton. Displaying natural ability and an unrelenting work ethic, Buxton was soon competing in national tournaments and winning titles.

Polar opposites in heritage, appearance and attitude, Gibson and Buxton became fast friends as competitors on the amateur tour. Gibson the tenacious, moody, arrogant and often erratic American provided stark contrast to the stylish, disciplined and steady Buxton. Bonded in part by their mutual segregation as a black and a Jew, Gibson and Buxton had the shared experiences of being prohibited from the exclusive country clubs that played host to many of the stops on the amateur tour.

Noteworthy for their integration of the elite tennis world, neither Gibson nor Buxton strove to establish themselves as social activists. “She was the Joe Louis of tennis,” writes Shoenfeld, “an African-American who had reached a preeminent position in her sport but declined to use that position for the betterment of her race.” Self-possessed and supremely self-assured, “Althea had worked hard and long, and she didn’t feel obligated to share her spoils with anyone” the author explains.

Humble and accepting, the genteel Buxton only later remarked of her career, ”’I always felt that I opened the door for British tennis after the war and led the way, and yet I never got the credit,’ she says.” Shoenfeld confirms, “She wasn’t wrong about the latter, at least.”

Most conspicuously, the Lawn Tennis Writers Association of Great Britain has given an annual award to the individual who has made the greatest contribution to English tennis, a tradition began in 1951. Angela Mortimer received the award for her 1961 Wimbledon win, and it was bestowed upon Greg Rusedski in 1997, although he lost at Wimbledon that year. Yet in 1956, when Angela became the first British player to reach the Wimbledon final since WWII, the award was “left vacant for one of only two times in half a century.” No explanation was ever given.

Playing at a time of high-quality women’s tennis, Gibson and Buxton competed against such notable contemporaries as Shirley Fry, Mortimer, Doris Hart and Shirley Bloomer. Against such rigorous rivals, Gibson captured 56 singles and doubles titles during her amateur career in the 1950’s including singles titles at the French Open (1956), Wimbledon (1957, 1958) and the U. S. Open (1957, 1958), as well as three straight doubles crowns at the French Open (1956, 1957, 1958). She set records throughout her career including being one of only two women in history to win three Wimbledon doubles titles with three different partners, counting the 1956 doubles championship she earned with partner Angela Buxton.

Enjoying much more modest success as a tour player, Buxton pieced together a respectable career, carrying the hopes of a nation on her slim shoulders by reaching the 1956 Wimbledon singles final, where she lost in short order. Rebounding from a humiliating defeat, Buxton redeemed herself just hours later by claiming the doubles title with partner Gibson. The pairing would also bring home the doubles trophy from the 1956 French Open.

A stellar athlete fueled by an unquenchable competitive spirit, Gibson additionally competed on the LPGA tour at the conclusion of her tennis career. Invited by Billie Jean King to participate in an exhibition match against then up-and-comer Chris Everet the middle-aged Gibson, clearly overpowered by the future superstar, showed her characteristic bravado, remarking that she was less than impressed by the young Evert, feeling she could easily oust the youngster in a rematch.

Typical of the generation of athletes participating in competitive tennis in the 1950’s, Gibson and Buxton earned fame but little fortune. Perpetually in financial distress for lack of any marketable skills outside of sports, Gibson struggled to her life’s end against economic hardship and failing health. Buxton, retiring to a domestic life of marriage and motherhood remains engaged in tennis but from the distance of a past-champion.

Eschewing the excuse of race or religion, Gibson and Buxton well deserve Shoenfeld’s memorial as accomplished performers who achieved success against significant odds. Stating gender as a more obvious obstacle to acceptance than skin color, Gibson in particular emerges as a fearless and fearsome force, apparently unaware and certainly uninhibited by any cultural barriers.

Though The Match identifies the 1956 Wimbledon doubles final as the climatic event of the Gibson/Buxton professional and personal relationship, any one of the historic matches depicted in Shoenfeld’s classy chronicle is deserving of the moniker.